51· She's So Emotional
Podcast show notes
In this episode of Frustrated and Exhausted, we’re unpacking the stereotypes around emotions in the workplace, especially the idea that women are “too emotional.”
Is it true that women are more emotional than men, or are we just expected to express emotions differently? I’ll share research that challenges these outdated beliefs and explore how these stereotypes impact women’s experiences and growth in professional settings.
We’ll also look at how organisations shape what’s “acceptable” when it comes to showing emotion, and I’ll share practical tips for navigating these unspoken rules.
This episode is all about finding ways to honour our emotions without letting workplace norms hold us back.
Here are the highlights
(01:58) Debunking the Myth of Gender-Based Emotional Differences
(05:06) Cultural Expectations and Emotional Expression at Work
(07:12) The Impact of Suppressing Emotions at Work
(12:15) Strategies for Navigating Emotional Stereotypes
(15:17) Final Thoughts
Get the Find Your Power audio-course HERE
Get the 5 Day Resilience Kickstarter
Connect with Ruth
-
Ruth
Welcome to Frustrated and Exhausted, the podcast for women in leadership, where I help you fulfill your ambitions without sacrificing your sanity or your resilience.
Hello and welcome to this week's Frustrated and Exhausted. Have you ever been called too emotional at work, maybe after a weeping moment, or have you heard those big, sweeping statements about women being more emotional than men? We all knowingly or unknowingly hold deep seated beliefs about the relationship between men, women and their emotions and that's what we're going to be digging into this week.
I want to offer you some research that I've kind of come across around emotions and emotions in the workplace, some thoughts around how as leaders we kind of respond to other people when they're have kind of having big emotions, and also sort of how as women in the workplace, we tread that fine line between kind of fitting in but also challenging a little bit as well and you know it's not an easy line to tread, we all know that. We're all emotional beings, whether we show them or not we all experience emotion. And you know the belief that women are more emotional than men is one of the most prevalent gender stereotypes in Western culture. It's everywhere, you know from, oh, she's doing this, what this and this, she must be on her period, you know, have you heard that one? All that sort of stuff that comes out. Oh, she's so emotional. Oh, she keeps crying. Oh, this or that, we're almost too much of something in these kind of conversations.
There was some research from 2021 at the University of Michigan and Purdue University which actually shows and what they did was they did like a town study where men and women both had to keep like a journal at certain points in the day of the emotions they were experiencing, and what the output from that actually showed was that emotional stability and fluctuations were almost identical between men and women. So, you know despite all the oh it must be the time of the month comments, there were statistically no meaningful fluctuations related to the menstrual cycle either. And it really kind of debunks that myth that our emotional lives are different. We are all human beings.
So what's actually going on? Well, the difference between men and women is our relationship with our emotions. It's what we are culturally expected and allowed to express about our emotions that actually is the difference. It's not the depth to which we experience them, it's not how many emotions we experience in a day, what those emotions are, the difference fundamentally is one of culture rather than human experience.
So, what about emotions at work? You know are we allowed to express them? Should we express them? Can we stop ourselves from expressing them? You know we all have different levels of emotional control and I've definitely had teary moments at work, you know because often when we talk about emotions at work, we're not talking about the oh, high five you've got that promotion or, you know the excited oh, we delivered on this emotions, or congratulations you've just had your baby emotions. You know we're talking about more the negative emotions that we experience and where their place is in the workplace because we certainly experience negative emotions at work. And sometimes those emotions, for me personally it's, it's been that there's been something shocking or upsetting and I can feel myself welling up. Sometimes I'm empathizing with something or somebody else, and sometimes it's from frustration or anger, or frustration and anger that I don't feel able to express in that moment. You know I've got no problem expressing positive emotions or very smiley people, I’m a very smiley person normally, but the areas where women are most often criticized for showing emotions at work are when there are negative emotions at play. Anger, perceived aggression, or when we cry, and people often mistake us crying as something that is about sadness, or because we feel upset but often tears express lots of other emotions as well, as I said like anger or frustration.
Interestingly research shows that men are not expected to show those sorts of emotions with the exception of anger, pride or aggression. Women are expected to smile, and we do by and large actually, research around smiling shows that women do smile more than men in response to lots of different scenarios. But our responses at work really vary depending on our organizational culture and what's allowed and what's not allowed, what's taboo, what would be judged, you know, negatively, what's acceptable. And the rules of behavior in many organizations are still predominantly set with men in mind and that's because very often in, you know, in lots and lots of arenas is actually only relatively recently that women have been in big roles, or even any role in some organizations. So you know it's not really that surprising that the rules are still set in that way, but it doesn't make it right. And organizational cultures vary. Some organizations that are maybe more modern will have a slightly different outlook on these things potentially but it also comes down to individuals and upbringing and what tone a leader sets in a particular business area. So you know what's what that person role models and sets the tone for really, really matters as well.
So, how have a think about the culture of the business or organization that you work in. Or that you run. What are the rules around emotions, the unspoken and this is the thing, these are usually a lot of it will be unspoken. What are the rules around emotions? How do people respond if somebody is displaying emotion, and you usually were talking about a negatively perceived emotion, although being too smiley, I've heard this one once or twice, you're too smiley Ruth, you know that can also be negatively perceived. What does that tell you about what is acceptable or not in your place of work? What are you comfortable to express there? And what are you not comfortable to express? And what does that mean that you're potentially carrying around with you the rest of the time if you're not able to express it as you feel it, where is that emotion going? Because unless you're doing something yourself to acknowledge it and get rid of it, that might be talking to a partner or a friend, it might be going for a run and just physically, you know getting the angst out. It could be whatever works for you but what's happening to that emotion if you can't express it at work? And because our attitudes to emotions are so personal you know some of us are quite tightly buttoned up, others less so, you some people just don't know how to respond to the negative emotions in the workplace and that feeling of real awkwardness. Oh, my goodness, she's crying, what do I do? I don't know what to do with this. You know people being paralyzed by other people's display of emotion is something I've certainly seen, you know and there can be a real fear around having to deal with other people's emotions if we're not that emotionally intelligent and if we don't have the words that we feel we need to do something but we don't know what to do that will help. And that can lead to all sorts of problematic responses that can actually leave the person experiencing those emotions in an even worse place and it can also damage trust between the person seeing those emotions take place and the person experiencing them, so it can do some relationship damage as well.
There's a great bit of research by a woman called Elisa Yew and by Justin Borg out of Stanford University and what that showed that when someone was in a leadership role and someone in their team was experiencing some kind of emotion, what they found was that all that was required was a simple acknowledgement of the emotion in order to build trust between the two people and to make that person's feel seen and validated. They saw two things that really made a difference. One was an initial non verbal reaction, that might be tipping your head to one side, It might be a little frown, you know It's something that where you're physically acknowledging the emotion that's in the room, followed by a simple, I noticed that you are feeling whatever the feeling is, angry, sad, upset, frustrated, and even if they got the emotion wrong. So even if what you thought you were seeing wasn't what you were seeing, because it opened up a conversation it didn't matter that you got it wrong as a leader, what it did was it still made that person feel seen and heard and validated and so it built trust.
It can feel quite challenging to have to deal with everybody else's emotions at work as well as potentially at home. It can be tiring, but it is fundamentally important. We all experience emotions and just that simple, I notice that you're feeling this can be the start of a really good conversation that can be a developmental conversation, it can be something about work or it could be something that just makes that person feel that you understand them, and that can do a lot in terms of what they are prepared to then do in terms of meeting your expectations and delivering for the team.
We don't live and work in perfect organizational cultures, and until we get to a point where organizational cultures are more emotionally intelligent for work, want of a better phrase, how do women in particular deal with this form of stereotyping? It's a tough one, and you're gonna have to make the best choice that you can for you in the circumstances that you were in. And you know going back to those questions I asked earlier about culture of your organization, really stepping back for a few minutes and giving yourself a few minutes to really clock that, you'll know it because you'll feel it every day, but really bring that to the front of your mind when you're thinking about this. There are choices, masking your emotions at work it does take a toll as I've spoken about before and we can do our best to hide our emotions, or at least those that we think will be judged for. But what I would say is that if this is the choice that you have to make because of your organizational culture, you need to find a different way of releasing those emotions, not in a bottle of wine, ideally, because that's not going to be great for you over over time because you have to live with this culture, potentially longer term.
Find a healthy way to release the emotion. Talk to a friend, talk to a partner. Go for a run, go for a walk, journal. Find a way that works for you of releasing the emotions that you're kind of carrying with you if you can't express them when they happen, and try to do that regularly because it just builds up. None of us end up in a good place.
You can also practice verbalizing the emotion. So in the moment, so that it doesn't come out as crying or shouting, you know for example, this is making me feel angry, frustrated, whatever it is, you know you don't have to shout about it, you can see though, you can acknowledge what you're feeling and say it. Or you can see this conversation is frustrating me because, and actually what that does is it, it gets it out, it puts it on the table but it allows you to move past the emotion itself into why, what is going on at the moment that is causing this emotion and that can be really useful because it helps you get to the nub of the matter, faster. And you know if you're in a position where somebody has just called you too emotional, too whatever it is, you know they've judged you aloud for being emotional in some way, you can call it out. Now there will be a time and a place for this and it really depends how brave you're feeling and what your environment is, who's in the room, etc. But you can call it out. You can say you do realize that you're stereotyping me as ‘this’ because I'm a woman and you expect me to be that. You know, you can quote the research that I mentioned earlier on you know about that thing about actually men and women both experiencing the same emotions at the same depth, just expressing them differently or not expressing them. You know there is a reason that people are talking about a mental health crisis for men and a lot of it is because the emotions are not being expressed. Because culturally for men, they are also not seen as being allowed to. We sort of, it gets this, this particular thing around emotions, puts men and women in a prison, of different types. For women it really plays out negatively in the workplace in terms of how we kind of can be perceived and how certain actions and expressions and things are perceived and how we're judged for that and that has an impact on our careers. And for men not being able to express emotion or be seen to express emotion, it's really not healthy either. So you know the more that we can call this sort of stuff out in the workplace, the healthier environment is for everybody.
So I'm just going to quickly recap kind of where we're at. We are all emotional beings, men and women. There are different cultural expectations around how we express those emotions, when we express those emotions, and which emotions are acceptable for us to express depending on whether we're male or female. Organizational cultures are different, what is acceptable in one organization might not be in another so really thinking about what is and isn't acceptable, consciously having that at the front of your mind is important in terms of navigating this. And you do have choices about how to navigate it.
I made some suggestions earlier. You know it's going to be down to you in the environment that you're in as to which of those routes you go down or maybe you'll find a different one. The important thing is to be thinking about it and to be ready with a response if somebody tries to tag you with one of those stereotypes.Finally, if you want to improve your organisation's literacy around either emotions or gender stereotyping, you know if you want to start having more of those conversations in your workplace, please do get in touch. This is something that I offer using consultancy workshops, all different ways of doing this, but if you'd like to have a conversation about that then do get in touch.
I hope that's been really helpful. I could go on about this one for quite a while because I think it's really, really important for mental health, for all of our well being that we we find a common language, that we start to break down some of these stereotypes so that everyone can find a way of expressing themselves in a way where they're not being judged and also where they're not having to hang on to negative emotions over long periods of time. Take care. I'll speak to you next week.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Frustrated and Exhausted. Hit the follow button for future episodes. You can also follow me on Instagram at Resonate Leadership and LinkedIn at Ruth Alexandra Wood, I'd absolutely love to hear from you. Frustrated and Exhausted is brought to you by Resonate Leadership and the wonderful team at the Podcast Boutique, I'm your host. Ruth Wood. Take care and speak to you soon.
